Marketing: Estate agents aim to press right buttons

The housing market is entering a new era where a virtual tour of a property can be enough to sell it

AT THE height of the Celtic tiger boom, lines of people clutching sandwiches and flasks of coffee queued outside new housing developments in the hope of securing the homes on offer.

As soon as a show house opened, hordes of would-be buyers queued up, eager to plant a foot on the first rung of the property ladder — or so it seemed.

A few years later, times have changed dramatically. It is still a seller’s market but supply is fast catching up with demand and, for the first time in a decade, estate agents are dusting down their marketing manuals and even discovering new ones.

“Competition is hotting up in the market and the traditional marketing strategies are no longer doing the job,” says Ronan O’Driscoll, the new homes director at Hamilton Osborne King.

“Agents are being forced to come up with more innovative, modern tools.” He says cinema-goers in Dublin,